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Monthly Archives: November 2014

I’ve pretty much given up on social media. Got rid of Tumblr, Instagram and Pinterest, Facebook’s becoming an effort and Twitter near-redundant. This is my first blog in ages for the same reason, no feedback, no interest and yet all these magazines claim all you have to do is place your ebook online, promote it through social media and you’re off: fame/fortune/friends, only online friends but hey, if you get enough ‘likes’ on facebook…
So, anyway, I’ve been rewriting and editing.
All that shit I ignored at the beginning? Rewrite, rewrite, edit, forever, constantly until your eyes pop. Yep, they were right.
So, I’m onto the 148,000 word epic that is The Most Boring ….
How to know you’re any good?
A story about one beige man’s adventure through divorce, to a tattoo, to motorcycles, a serious accident, a love affair to drug courier and that’s just the first quarter of the book! It is fucking awesome but of course I would think that. Trying to judge it objectively is really difficult. I keep wondering if it’s boring but a guy finding himself caught up in the middle of drug-culture (coke-smuggling in Amsterdam) is hardly boring, especially with the amount of imagery and detail I’m adding as I go over everything yet again. I suppose if your thing is murder mystery maybe the lack of clues or a specific idea of where the stories going might irritate? The fact is it would be impossible to see how the chap who starts off coming home from work early with a dose of flu could ever end up as the character that emerges at the end but maybe I’m biased. Twists and plot-changes aren’t my thing, long meandering tales of human condition, love, romance, need and passion are. Chuck in a healthy dose of Native American mythology and plain made-up fantasy and you’ve got a typical Broc Silva novel, and?
I’m astonished how difficult something that seemed easy at the beginning has become but attempting perfection is always going to be beyond the best of us.
Everything feels beyond me, apparently that’s a good sign!

51 pages of seriously intense editing to go before the who-knows-how-many’th-drafts version of this novel is done. The idea is that once I’ve finished the really difficult bit I can do a quick read-through, a few minor updates and, hopefully, that will be another fully-updated as-good-as-I-can-make-it finished product. Hours and hours of quibbling over dialogue, of adding large sections of metaphor, imagery, detail that’s sadly lacking. It’s actually quite shocking how poor the quality of what I took to be a finished novel a few years ago was before I kicked up a gear. I hope now I’m setting the standard where it needs to be but I’m certainly no natural at this.
It makes me wonder if all authors have to put as much in?
Maybe 15 pages today and probably 4/5 hours of concentrating really hard to achieve what I set out to do? Those 51 pages could take weeks the speed I work at but who knows, maybe now I’ll be in with a chance of impressing an agent/publisher or even just a few readers?
Whatever happens I think these books are the best I’m going to produce, the spark’s gone, the oeuvre fizzled out, the zoww diminished.
The thought of beginning a whole novel fills me with dread although I have got one half-started and another idea mapped out, I don’t know…such a commitment!
Anyway, the story will continue until satisfaction is achieved (ooh Marjorie!)